


A Geography of Loss

by finisterre



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-27
Updated: 2010-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-13 10:21:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finisterre/pseuds/finisterre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JK Rowling never said what happened to Dean Thomas's father. This is one version of what could have happened to him</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Geography of Loss

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the picfor1000 challenge: exactly 1,000 words to match a picture. Filled to the brim with original characters and other things that make sensible people run screaming.

**1973**

The small, spindly boy was watching him draw. "It's ... dead good..." he stuttered. "Is the quill charmed?"

Patrick smiled. "Where would be the art in that?"

"You did it yourself? Cor. Brilliant."

He was the quiet kid who hung around with that cheeky little bleeder Sirius Black. "Where's the rest of your gang, Remus?"

"Quidditch," Remus said.

"Not playing yourself?"

"Not allowed. Madame Pomfrey says." A sigh blew Remus' fringe out of his eyes. "I like the library though. S'peaceful." Remus picked up Patrick's copy of "Thaumaturgical Cartography". "What's this?"

"'The mystical blend of art and science to map the magical," said Patrick, quoting from the foreword.

Five pleading letters and a tough interview had convinced Mr Kobai that he could use an apprentice. "It's what I'm going to do after my Newts." He still enjoyed saying that.

As a child he tracked his sailor father around the world, matching postcards to atlas dots. There was something magical in the way his muggle dad had sent a sliver of far-off lands to his family. His father passed away but the fascination lived on.

"So you could find all the secret passageways in the castle?" Remus asked, failing miserably at sounding casual.

"Look, let me show you a mapping spell." Patrick set aside the drawing.

Remus gazed at it. "She's beautiful."

"That's my Rosa," Patrick said, the name honey on his tongue.

* * *

 **January 1981**

January sleet was trying to drive all of London indoors. It had certainly kept Mr Kobai at home -- but that was not unusual these days. His daughter's death had left him squibbed by grief.

Patrick was setting the wards for the workshop when he felt the back of his neck prickle.

"Lumos," he whispered. The alleyway flooded with light. A figure shrank back against lichened brickwork.

"Patrick Franklin?"

"Who wants to know?"

A haunted, cadaverous youth in muggle black, hair plastered to his skull by rain, stepped into the wandlit circle.

"Remus?"

"How are you, Patrick?"

"Come inside before you catch your death."

He threw Remus the towel from by the sink. By the time he had made two mugs of tea, Remus was at his desk.

Patrick moved the map he was working on so it wouldn't be marked. It writhed and hid its key in annoyance, then settled down.

Remus gestured at a photograph of an empty white-sand beach. Patrick's wife wandered into frame, the baby in her arms and her easy smile like a benediction.

Remus's tapered eyes flared in surprise. "That's my family, when we portkeyed to Barbados," said Patrick. "That's my son, Dean, and my wife, Rosa."

"I know. The drawing," said Remus.

"You remember that?"

"Is she in our world?" Remus asked. This was the polite euphemism.

Patrick shook his head. "Muggle. But she knows."

"And these people?" Remus pointed at the muggle picture of Rosa's parents holding Dean at Jimmy Thomas's New Year party.

"They think I'm a civil servant at the DHSS. What's this about, Remus?"

"They killed Octavia Lyall and her family yesterday."

Patrick drew in a gulp of air. No question who "they" were. He'd seen the Dark Mark over London often that autumn. "Do we know why?"

"Lyall created a map that tracked Death-eaters. Even cloaking charms couldn't fool it."

"Amazing," Patrick said, his mind already trying to puzzle out Octavia's possible techniques.

"They didn't want us to have it." No question who "us" was either. The Order. "We want you to finish Lyall's work."

"No. I'm not ..."

"Mr Kobai says you're the only one who could now."

How like Mr Kobai to say that only to a third party. "No. I've got a wife. A child."

A cold, calculating stare from Remus. "How safe will they be if we lose? A mixed-blood child and a wife 'who knows'? We all have to take sides."

Patrick slapped a hand down on his incomplete map. Leylines shivered away from his anger. "You're a bastard."

"No," Remus said. "Desperate. And I have Octavia's notes."

Patrick bowed his head. "What do you need?"

* * *

 **March**

Patrick was fizzing with leftover magic as he ran to Kobai's workshop for the last time.

The maps in his pocket hummed with power. He was going to deliver it to Remus and then he and his family were going to hide far away. Barbados, maybe.

Thank God for Jimmy Thomas, his oldest friend, who had looked after Rosa and Dean for the past week while he worked.

It was Remus who had insisted on meeting at the workshop. When he got there it was freezing. A film of dust overlaid all.

The workshop door scraped open. "Peter? I thought Remus..."

Pettigrew nodded at him, then stepped back into the shadows of the alley. Three dark, shrouded figures advanced. Death eaters.

"You know what we want, mudblood filth," one hissed.

A quick incantation warned the maps to hide. They shivered and went blank. Rosa and Dean hurried out of the photo's frame and it became merely a postcard of a beach.

Patrick tried not to tremble as he raised his wand.

  
* * *

Jimmy let the pasty-looking white geezer into the house because Rosa knew him. Lupin, his name was. Another of Patrick's weird friends. They were all trouble.

Jimmy put the kettle on. At Rosa's shout he rushed into the living room to see her crying, and the man waving a long pencil, and shouting weird latin-sounding words and Jimmy tried to take him down and *bang*, all the lights went...

...

... out and Jimmy had no idea why he was sitting on the carpet. "Damn," he said. "Fuse has gone."

There was a thin wail from upstairs. Dean.

"I think someone's awake," Rosa said, smiling. She was being brave in a way that made him want to murder Patrick for walking out on her like that.

Jimmy knew he wouldn't be back and Rosa had accepted it.

Neither could remember why.


End file.
